1.
byte.
2. <
language> A systems language written by
Ken Thompson in
1970 mostly for his own use under
Unix on the
PDP-11.
B
was later improved by Kerninghan(?) and Ritchie to produce
C.
B was used as the systems language on
Honeywell's
GCOS-3.
B was, according to Ken, greatly influenced by
BCPL, but the
name
B had nothing to do with BCPL.
B was in fact a revision
of an earlier language,
bon, named after Ken Thompson's
wife, Bonnie.
[
"The Programming Language B", S.C. Johnson & B.W. Kernighan,
CS TR 8, Bell Labs (Jan 1973)].
[
Features? Differences from C?]
(1997-02-02)
3. <
language> A simple interactive programming language by
Lambert Meertens and Steven Pemberton.
B was the predecessor
of
ABC.
ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/languages/B.tar.Z.
[
"Draft Proposal for the B Language", Lambert Meertens, CWI,
Amsterdam, 1981].
4. <
language, specification> A specification language by
Jean-Raymond Abrial of
B Core UK, Magdalen Centre, Oxford
Science Park, Oxford OX4 4GA.
B is related to
Z and
supports development of
C code from specifications.
B has
been used in major
safety-critical system specifications in
Europe, and is currently attracting increasing interest in
industry. It has robust, commercially available tool support
for specification, design, proof and code generation.
E-mail: <
Ib.Sorensen@comlab.ox.ac.uk>.
(1995-04-24)